Samos Rebelled From Its Alliance With Athens Satrap: Battle of Potidaea Socrates Alcibiades

The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally Samos rebelled
from its alliance with Athens. The rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap, and Athens
found itself facing the prospect of revolts throughout the empire. The Spartans, whose intervention
would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called a congress
of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. Sparta's powerful ally Corinth was notably
opposed to intervention, and the congress voted against war with Athens. The Athenians crushed
the revolt, and peace was maintained.[16]
The more immediate events that led to war involved Athens and Corinth. After suffering a defeat at
the hands of their colony of Corcyra, a sea power that was not allied to either Sparta or Athens,
Corinth began to build an allied naval force. Alarmed, Corcyra sought an alliance with Athens, which
after debate and input from both Corcyra and Corinth, decided to swear a defensive alliance with
Corcyra. At the Battle of Sybota, a small contingent of Athenian ships played a critical role in
preventing a Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra. In order to uphold the Thirty Years' Peace,
however, the Athenians were instructed not to intervene in the battle unless it was clear that Corinth
was going to press onward to invade Corcyra. However, the Athenian warships participated in the
battle nevertheless, and the arrival of additional Athenian triremes was enough to dissuade the
Corinthians from exploiting their victory, thus sparing much of the routed Corcyrean and Athenian
fleet.[17]
Following this, Athens instructed Potidaea in the peninsula of Chalkidiki, a tributary ally of Athens but
a colony of Corinth, to tear down its walls, send hostages to Athens, dismiss the Corinthian
magistrates from office, and refuse the magistrates that the city would send in the future. [18] The
Corinthians, outraged by these actions, encouraged Potidaea to revolt and assured them that they
would ally with them should they revolt from Athens. During the subsequent Battle of Potidaea, the
Corinthians unofficially aided Potidaea by sneaking contingents of men into the besieged city to help
defend it. This was a direct violation of the Thirty Years' Peace, which had (among other things)
stipulated that the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League would respect each other's
autonomy and internal affairs.
Battle of Potidaea (432 BC): Athenians against Corinthians. Scene of Socrates saving Alcibiades. 18th century
engraving.
A further source of provocation was an Athenian decree, issued in 433/2 BC, imposing stringent
trade sanctions on Megarian citizens (once more a Spartan ally after the conclusion of the First
Peloponnesian War). It was alleged that the Megarians had desecrated the Hiera Orgas. These
sanctions, known as the Megarian decree, were largely ignored by Thucydides, but some modern
economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with the prosperous Athenian
empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and have accordingly considered the decree
to be a contributing factor in bringing about the war.[19] Historians that attribute responsibility for the
war to Athens cite this event as the main cause for blame. [20]
At the request of the Corinthians, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League
to Sparta in 432 BC, especially those who had grievances with Athens to make their complaints to
the Spartan assembly. This debate was attended by members of the league and an uninvited
delegation from Athens, which also asked to speak, and became the scene of a debate between the
Athenians and the Corinthians. Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's
inactivity up to that point, warning the Spartans that if they continued to remain passive while the
Athenians were energetically active, they would soon find themselves outflanked and without allies.
[21]
The Athenians, in response, reminded the Spartans of their record of military success and
opposition to Persia, and warned them of the dangers of confronting such a powerful state,
ultimately encouraging Sparta to seek arbitration as provided by the Thirty Years' Peace.
[22]
Undeterred, a majority of the Spartan assembly voted to declare that the Athenians had broken
the peace, essentially declaring war.[23]
The "Archidamian War" (431–421 BC)
The walls surrounding Athens

Sparta and its allies, with the exception of Corinth, were almost exclusively land-based powers, able
to summon large land armies which were very nearly unbeatable (thanks to the legendary Spartan
forces). The Athenian Empire, although based in the peninsula of Attica, spread out across the
islands of the Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense wealth from tribute paid from these islands.
Athens maintained its empire through naval power. Thus, the two powers were relatively unable to
fight decisive battles.
The Spartan strategy during the first war, known as the Archidamian War (431–421 BC) after
Sparta's king Archidamus II, was to invade the land surrounding Athens. While this invasion deprived
Athenians of the productive land around their city, Athens itself was able to maintain access to the
sea, and did not suffer much. Many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside
the Long Walls, which connected Athens to its port of Piraeus. At the end of the first year of the war,
Pericles gave his famous Funeral Oration (431 BC).
The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time; in the tradition of
earlier hoplite warfare the soldiers were expected to go home to participate in the harvest. Moreover,
Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed to be kept under control, and could not be left
unsupervised for long periods of time. The longest Spartan invasion, in 430 BC, lasted just forty
days.
Bust of Pericles.
The Athenian strategy was initially guided by the strategos, or general, Pericles, who advised the
Athenians to avoid open battle with the far more numerous and better trained Spartan hoplites,
relying instead on the fleet. The Athenian fleet, the most dominant in Greece, went on the offensive,
winning a victory at Naupactus. In 430 BC an outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The plague ravaged
the densely packed city, and in the long run, was a significant cause of its final defeat. The plague
wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers, including Pericles and his sons. Roughly one-
third to two-thirds of the Athenian population died. Athenian manpower was correspondingly
drastically reduced and even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to a city riddled
with plague. The fear of plague was so widespread that the Spartan invasion of Attica was
abandoned, their troops being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy.
After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive
strategy and to the more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to
particular importance in Athenian democracy at this time was Cleon, a leader of the hawkish
elements of the Athenian democracy. Led militarily by a clever new general Demosthenes (not to be
confused with the later Athenian orator Demosthenes), the Athenians managed some successes as
they continued their naval raids on the Peloponnese. Athens stretched their military activities
into Boeotia and Aetolia, quelled the Mytilenean revolt and began fortifying posts around the
Peloponnese. One of these posts was near Pylos on a tiny island called Sphacteria, where the
course of the first war turned in Athens's favour. The post off Pylos struck Sparta where it was
weakest: its dependence on the helots, who tended the fields while its citizens trained to become
soldiers. The helots made the Spartan system possible, but now the post off Pylos began attracting
helot runaways. In addition, the fear of a general revolt of helots emboldened by the nearby Athenian
presence drove the Spartans to action. Demosthenes, however, outmanoeuvred the Spartans in
the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for
them to surrender. Weeks later, though, Demosthenes proved unable to finish off the Spartans. After
boasting that he could put an end to the affair in the Assembly, the inexperienced Cleon won a great
victory at the Battle of Sphacteria. The Athenians captured 300 Spartan hoplites. The hostages gave
the Athenians a bargaining chip.
After these battles, the Spartan general Brasidas raised an army of allies and helots and marched
the length of Greece to the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in Thrace, which controlled several
nearby silver mines; their product supplied much of the Athenian war fund. Thucydides was
dispatched with a force which arrived too late to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis; Thucydides
was exiled for this, and, as a result, had the conversations with both sides of the war which inspired
him to record its history. Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed in Athenian efforts to retake
Amphipolis (see Battle of Amphipolis). The Spartans and Athenians agreed to exchange the
hostages for the towns captured by Brasidas, and signed a truce.
Peace of Nicias (421 BC)

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The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally Samos rebelled

The "Archidamian War" (431–421 BC)

The walls surrounding Athens

Peace of Nicias (421 BC)

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